Nine to watch and learn. This is comical. No wonder why the City of Mobile has serious budget problems.
Great photo by Tonya. It reminds me of scenes where a half dozen construction workers are seen standing around watching the one non-English speaking laborer doing all the shoveling. All chiefs and no indians.
Been dry so much of the rain was quickly absorbed. Tides that day (6th) were minimal. Currents were minimal. Muddy water barely reached Dog River Park. Water rose only about a foot up by Halls Mill road. A gully washer can raise water levels 5 feet or more and cause a current strong enough to make it impossible to paddle upstream. Strong water velocity is what carries trash down stream and velocity was weak on Dec. 6th.
Many factors play a role where the public litter ends up after a gully washer - like tide, water level rise, and wind, but predictably "floatables" end up accumulating somewhere along a 3 mile stretch above or below Dog River Park. I'm betting the usual downstream residents who normally get trashed by heavy rains will be in for an ugly surprise when the heavy rains come next summer. As long as no one is removing the garbage from area waterways and creek banks the garbage will continue its trek downstream when the conditions are right because the shorelines are currently loaded with plenty of garbage. How much? One volunteer this summer was filling one large bag of garbage for about every 6 feet of shoreline he cleaned. Unfortunately he quit and the areas he cleaned already have new accumulations of litter.
In my opinion, the litter trap method of cleaning waterways will not solve the downstream litter problem unless the City puts in a litter trap in front of every stream propelling significant amounts of public litter downstream. Based on the way the City is placing litter traps now, they need at least four more to capture the garbage inundating just the Dog River Park vicinity.
From where the current litter trap was installed in Eslava Creek by Holcombe Avenue, they need another litter trap 100 yards downstream to catch the garbage from the huge double barrel box culvert that drains the Holcombe Avenue area.
Then then need another litter trap 0.6 miles downstream of the double box culvert to catch the garbage from a drainage canal that drains the Birdville and Michigan Avenue area.
Then they need another litter trap 1.0 miles downstream from that drainage canal to catch the garbage that comes from I-65 East Beltline Highway, Highway 90 and all the way from Bel Air Mall (Bolton Branch).
Then they need another litter trap 0.5 miles downstream from Bolton Branch to catch the garbage that comes from Dauphin Island Parkway and Perimeter Road by Brookley (Rabby Creek).
Then they need to remove the garbage that is currently in the water and on the creek bank so that there are no more piles of garbage to be carried downstream by a heavy rain. Installing a litter trap without removing the downstream garbage is like a doctor leaving garbage in a wound he or she sutures up - a dumb thing to do.
With those four additional litter traps, and a garbage free creek, then and only then will the residents down around the vicinity of Dog River Park get some relief from storm water runoff generated litter. Those five traps would filter out most but not all of of the trash affecting just one tributary on Dog River. Unfortunately, there are about a half dozen more tributaries in the Dog River Watershed, some suffering the same garbage problems. Plus, Mobile has several other Watersheds each having several of their own tributaries.
Putting in one litter trap on a County wide drainage system that has no filters and is bleeding garbage is like putting a single dinky spot bandaid on someone who has a cut from head to toe. The intention may good but the outcome is predictable. No change. The bleeding of garbage into State Waters will continue not only in Dog River Watershed, but also in Three Mile Creek watershed, Garrows Bend watershed and all the way down to the Bayou La Batre watershed.
Hence my opinion that Mobile simply cannot afford to install and maintain enough litter traps to do an adequate job at filtering out the garbage from its many waterways. They would get much better results by employing people to physically remove the garbage from the waterways. If the waterways were clean, it could be something done only after heavy rains but because the pollution has been ignored for so long it is becoming a
What a novel idea - using manual labor to remove the public garbage from waterways that are full of garbage. One Public Service worker could keep most of Mobile waterways clean all year long for $20,000 to $30,000. City and County got no money to clean their waterways? It is public trash polluting these waterways so pass a tax on the containers polluting the waterways to fund removal of the public pollution.
Naaa, let's leave all of Mobile's urban waterways full of garbage so it will attract visitors. Let's leave the garbage in the water and on the creek banks so the trash will continue to pollute State waters downstream which is a violation of the Clean Water Act. Naaa, instead of hiring someone to clean up the garbage, let's do nothing and then waste tax money by paying thousands of dollars in fines for violations and paying expensive lawyer fees to ward off law suits. Naaa, let's waste untold man hours dealing with MS4 issues and the wrath of ADEM who keeps getting inundated with complaints about waterway pollution that are being ignored.
The nine what appear to be city workers pictured above are supposedly learning how to remove trash from the litter trap - a trap that may only have to be emptied a couple times a year depending on significant rainfall events. If only Mobile could learn from other cities that use litter traps and get them emptied for free while incorporating significant a educational program into the mix teaching about about the detrimental effects littering has on the environment. Click Here to read more.
If you keep doing things the way you always have, you'll always get the same results. We need radical change to alter public habit concerning convenience containers and illegal littering. If leaders really wanted to solve the problem at the source, they need to use consequence to change peer pressure and expectations. People litter because individually there is almost no chance they will get caught and even if someone sees them few will say anything. Collectively people ignore the roadside garbage because almost all can say they did not personally put it there so it is not their problem. Simply put, there is no peer pressure mechanism to stop the littering habit no matter how much money you spend on education. The solution is for a leader with big nads to stand up and say, "We're closing this road, or that one, until our litter crew safely removes your garbage." This includes the state highways and interstates. Closing roads while a crew goes from one end to the other removing the public's garbage from the roadsides and ditches sets the consequence. I bet a high percentage of people would change their habit if they knew their life could be severely inconvenienced at times by road closures. Seriously, do you know how much tax money is wasted just to remove public trash from the sides of roads?
The second thing to do is fire the public works director in Mobile because plenty of the garbage in the roadside ditches come from City and commercial garbage truck operation spills which happen often. I have never once seen a worker stop to pick up the trash his truck left. If the City doesn't care, why should its constituents? Change starts at the top.